Home MLBBST Game Guides MLB.TV 2008 Enhanced Media player

MLB.TV 2008 Enhanced Media player

by Matt Smith

When the details for the 2008 MLB.tv subscription packages were announced, I noted that the products on offer were predominantly the same as those from 2007 (including the price); however one of the few changes MLB.TV subscribers will notice this season is the new media player.

MLB.com are leading the way in embracing Microsoft Silverlight, using it to embed video clips into their standard web pages and now using the tool to bring you their main multimedia content. They are selling this as a new “enhanced” media player. Is it an improvement on the old one?

For those of you who haven’t yet subscribed, MLB.com are helpfully providing a demo of the MLB.TV service on their subscriptions page. (As a post-script warning, I had the demo running in the background while writing this article and it stopped working twice – forcing Internet Explorer to close on both occasions. I’ve watched the best part of three live games using this new media player so far and have encountered no such problems, so it looks like it’s a bug linked to the demo rather than something that should put you off subscribing).

The new media player gives you three different viewing options available via a click of a button. They don’t have official names so I will call them widget mode, minimalist mode and large-screen mode.

All three modes include a ‘score’ strap line above the video screen (note: by video screen I mean the box containing the actual video footage). You can choose to hide the score, although this doesn’t get rid of the strap line, it just blanks the text out. Now, generally the video streams will have the broadcaster’s score strap line superimposed already so in a lot of cases this may seem to be a slight waste of effort; however, regular MLB.TV subscribers will know that some of the video streams are taken directly from the ballpark and in these cases you often do not get all of the superimposed features (score, inning, number of outs, men on base etc) that you take for granted and miss badly when they are not there. This has been extremely frustrating at times so overall the addition of the score strap line is welcome. (Note: in the demo, the scoreline just gives you the final score and, unlike in the ‘real’ version, doesn’t update as the game progresses).

Let’s look at each of the viewing modes in more detail.

‘Widget Mode’

The first option utilizes the functionality of Silverlight the most. You get a decent sized screen with the option to add additional widgets around the outside. Currently there are two extra sources of info you can add in:

  • a boxscore, which can alternate between showing the actual live boxscore (give or take a slight delay) or the starting lineups and benches.

  • The inning-by-inning score board

You can add them in or take them away with a click of the button and you can move them about via the standard click and drag method. It’s probable that over the course of the season, more widgets will be added.

The widget mode also has four other buttons you can click to navigate your way to other content. They are all self-explanatory: Today’s games, Sights and Sounds, My Team and Show Related Links. This is fairly standard, useful stuff, but the smart part is the way in which the menus slide open and closed, with the screen automatically shrinking/increasing in size accordingly. It’s very smooth, although in the demo there is a one second delay while the menu loads up (this isn’t so pronounced in the ‘real’ version).

‘Minimalist Mode’

The minimalist mode, as my nickname suggests, keeps the screen the same size as in widget mode, but strips away most of the additional features to produce a more compact player. You still get the advert strap line at the bottom of the player and the score strap line, although the font size is a bit small in places.

‘Large-screen mode

The large-screen mode takes away most of the additional features (including the advert strap line) and then increases the size of the video screen. This takes up approximately 85 per cent of your actual monitor screen, which is why I called it large-screen mode rather than full-screen. Pressing F11 in this mode does take it to about 95 per cent, although the constant presence of the score strap line means you cannot quite take it up to 100 per cent. You could put the video on genuine full-screen mode in the old media player, but the difference is minimal so I don’t count it as a mark against the new player.

The picture

The Spring Training games are being streamed in the basic 400K and switching between the new player and the old player (which you can still access) there doesn’t appear to be much, if any, difference between the picture quality. The new player does look ever so slightly sharper to me, but I might be imagining it! There certainly isn’t much of a difference although I can’t say I expected there to be one.

Conclusion

So the picture isn’t obviously enhanced, but the media player certainly is. The score strap line is a useful bonus, although it would be nice to have the option to get rid of it completely. The large-screen and minimalist modes offer you a genuine choice to fit the player on to your screen to suit your other PC usage at any given time. The real ‘enhanced’ part of the media player is the widget mode, which will enable you to customize the features around the video screen and to access other content smoothly. MLB.com’s development work with Silverlight was highlighted here back in May last year and their demonstration proves that the current range of available widgets is only the tip of the iceberg. It’s clear that not only is the current version of the media player an improvement on the previous effort, but that there is a large amount of untapped potential for us to look forward to over the coming years.

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11 comments

Anni March 7, 2008 - 12:39 pm

Do the scores actually show for you in the score line?

I’ve watched quite a few games now, and the data never shows up in the score line. I’ve tested it in both IE and Firefox, but no luck. I get the team names and the headers in the score line, but no actual data.

Anyone else with the same problem and a possible solution?

Reply
Matt Smith March 7, 2008 - 5:18 pm

The more I’ve used it, the more bugs I’ve encountered. The scores sometimes work, but invariably I have the same problem as you (I use IE as my browser). Last night I was watching a game and the boxscore refused to show one of the teams. Whenever I tried to scoll down, it just pushed me back to the top again.

I think it’s a case of the Silverlight media player being something of a work in progress. Hopefully they will iron these bugs out in time for the regular season.

Reply
Paul March 16, 2008 - 11:33 am

Hey, Can anyone confirm that if you subscribe to MLB.com do any the backout restrictions apply? Could you let me know? That woul be great!

Reply
Matt Smith March 16, 2008 - 3:32 pm

Hi Paul. Depends where you are based. If you are in Britain then, no, the blackout restictions do not apply to us at all. We can watch whichever live games we want through MLB.tv, regardless of whether they are also being broadcast on Five or NASN.

From the international perspective, Japan are blacked out for all games and there are some other post-season restrictions.

Full details can be found near the bottom of the MLB.tv subscription page:
http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/subscriptions/mlbtv.jsp

Reply
Paul March 16, 2008 - 6:18 pm

Hey,

Thats great thanks allot! Yep in in Sunny Scotland been hooked since I caught a Yankee game in NYC last year! I was in two minds where to subscribe to MLB.com or Setanta!

Paul.

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Paul March 25, 2008 - 6:33 pm

Hey so no blackout then that right? Would you recommend MLB.com or setanta?

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Matt Smith March 25, 2008 - 8:34 pm

Both are well worth subscribing to so your choice really depends on whether you are interested in the other sports that Setanta broadcasts.

NASN do show a decent amount of MLB games (up to ten live games a week) alongside other baseball programmes such as Baseball Tonight and This Week in Baseball, so you’ll get plenty of baseball coverage if you go down that route. Of course your subscription fee is paying for lots of other sports as well though.

MLB.com ‘just’ gives you access to MLB games (all 2,400+ of them, either live or on archive), but if that’s what you are interested in watching then MLB.tv is for you. You get a vast amount more baseball for your money with the MLB.com option, but you might prefer a bit less baseball alongside access to other sports, which would make Setanta your best bet.

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Chris April 1, 2008 - 7:20 pm

Where are the condensed games this year?

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Matt Smith April 1, 2008 - 8:32 pm

Hi Chris. Sadly it looks like they’ve done away with them, replaced by the 2-3 minute Daily Rewind Game recaps. I had hoped to watch the recaps for all of yesterday’s games this evening but the column is blank on the Multimedia guide page for that date. You can get to a couple of the Recaps via a different route, but not all.

Certainly a loss for us baseball fans.

Reply
zac young April 3, 2008 - 3:44 am

I’m not a big fan of the new player due to the 85 percent screen… is there a way to download the old one??? I liked the 100 percent the best. Thanks.

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Matt Smith April 3, 2008 - 7:00 am

Hi Zac. You can get to the old player by uninstalling Silverlight from your PC. When you go back in to MLB.tv, it will ask you whether you want to download Silverlight or use the old media player.

BUT, when I last checked, the size of the screen is now no different to that of the Silverlight one. It’s all to do with the fact that they want to use video with an aspect of 16:9 and its the same in both media players. Sorry!

Reply

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